Disk Partitions (MBR - GPT)

In Windows 7 systems we have two different partitioning systems.

1. The Master Boot Record (MBR). (supported by all versions of Windows
2. The Globally Unique Identifier Partition Table (GPT). (supported on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Servers 2003 and 2008)

GPT offers several advantages over MBR such as:

• It can support up to 128 partitions, while MBR supports only four.
• GPT can support larger partition sizes. In theory, a GPT disk can be up to 18 Exabyte’s in size (about 18,000,000 terabytes)
• GPT uses primary and backup partition tables for redundancy and CRC32 fields for improved partition data structure integrity. MBR does not have redundant partition tables.

 

You can change a basic disk from MBR to GPT partition style so long as the disk does not contain any partitions or volumes. You first need to back up the data on the MBR disk so you can restore it after the conversion.